Consuming Behavior in the Area of Tourism - Coursework Example

Introduction: Consumer behavior is a complex area of research. Consumer’s purchasing behavior seems to change according to the product categories. When it comes to make a purchasing decision for any particular service or product, several factors influence consumer’s decision making process. Theories of consumer behavior actually discussed how a rational consumer behaves while making a consumption decision. While discussing consumer’s decision making process theories of consumer behavior take into account several factors related to consumer’s psychology, socio-economic perspectives, anthropology etc. (Solomon, 3-6; Engel et al. 4-5) The present paper puts its focus on analyzing consuming behavior in the area of tourism. Tourism is considered to be a very important product or service. Consumer’s decision making process regarding tourism is, however, very complex as the decision making process in this case goes through a number of complicated stages. There exists a number of literatures which discusses the consumers’ decision making method involved in choosing a travel destination. The next section of the present paper of will present the finding regarding consumer behavior in tourism from the existing literatures, both theoretical, and empirical. After the completion of a rigorous literature review, the paper will present my own experience regarding choosing a travel destination. Once my own experiences is discussed, the next section will makes an attempt to compare my own findings with what have already been documented in the existing literature. Finally in the last part of this paper, the paper will summarize the findings and try to provide some marketing strategies that those tourists’ spot needs to apply for attracting consumers. Research back ground and conceptual framework Consumers make their travel decision by taking into account a lot of factors. The selection of a tourist spot is not at all random. A lot of researches are done by a consumer before choosing a particular place as his/her travel destination. Hence, while marketing for tourism, one should ensure that a correct image of the travel spot is being displayed to the consumers. Tourist’s decision making is dependent on a number of psychological, social, economical factors. Some of these factors are internal to the tourists while some factors are external. Among the internal factors that influence a tourist’s decision include options that are available to the tourists, perception regarding a holiday spot, attitude and personality of the individual, the tourist’s life style, existing knowledge regarding alternatives travel destination, the individual’s hobby and interests, past traveling experiences, work and family commitments of the tourist, income, and finally personal motivation. There also exists a number of external factors which influences a tourist’s decision. These external factors can not be controlled by the tourist. These factors include availability of suitable tourists’ destination, travel agency’s advices, family and friends recommendations regarding certain tourists’ destinations, restrictions on traveling to some particular place on account of war, civil disputes, visa related problems etc, potential health related problems in the travel destinations, and finally the climate of the tourists’ spots. It is, however, not that all these factors produce same kind of influences on consumer’s decision making process. While some of these factors play important roles in the decision making process of the tourists, some other factors do not seem to produce that much influence. (Swarbrooke and Horner, 74; Iso-Ahola, 46-47; McCabe, 1050) In the well-known model of tourists’ decision making constructed by Gilbert, four major components that play major role in the decision making process are found to be motivation, personality of attitude of the consumer, perception or image built within the consumer regarding the product, and consumer’s knowledge about the pros and cons of the product. Apart from these four vital factors, Gilbert’s framework also has four other important factors – reference group influence, family influence, socioeconomic influence, and cultural influence. Several other researchers also have found that all these factors plays important role in tourists decision making process, although in varied degree. However, one interesting thing about all of these factors is that they are very much interdependent. (Swarbrooke and Horner, 75) The following diagrams present one of the well known frameworks developed by one theorist (Gilbert) for explaining consumer purchasing behavior: Socio-economic influences Cultural influences Perceptions Consumer Motivations Purchasing Leanings Behavior Personality/attitudes Reference group influences Family influences Figure 1 Apart from Gilbert, Neel et al presented another framework, in which consumer’s life style has been considered to be the most important factor in making purchasing, Consumer’s life style has been assumed to be, in turn, determined by factors like, emotions, personality, motives, perceptions, learning, demographics, values, culture, marketing activities, reference groups, social status, and household. Consumer’s life style helps in building the attitude or needs regarding the consumption of the tourism product. These needs in turn result in occurrences of a number of incidences in particular order as follows: Recognition of problem » information search » evaluation and selection » store choice and purchase » post purchase processes. This series of incidences actually helps in gathering experiences in one particular purchase which in turn influences purchasing decision of the similar type of products in future. (Neel et al, 33-40) On the other hand, in the model of Wahab and Rothfield the process works in the following way: Initial stimulus » Conceptual framework » Fact gathering » definitions of assumptions » Design of alternatives » forecast of consequences » Cost benefit of alternatives » decision » outcome. (Pizam and Mansfeld, 19) In case of tourism, the most important factors have been found to be the motivation, socio-economic factors and image, among all other factors (Gilbert, 1991). Dann, in his study, has identified several factors that motivates tourist to take his decisions. He has categorized all those factors into push and pull motives. The push motives include factors like environmental perception, self evaluation, status, enhancement of personal as well as social relations, etc, while pull factors include education and novelty related aspects. (Dann, 192-93; Dann, 217-218) In many empirical researches it has been found that tourists have a tendency to learn about several tourists spots in the pre-decision making phase. For choosing a final destination, the first step is usually found to be choosing some alternative travel spots on the basis of the information gathered from the experiences of family and friends and from internet. After the selection of alternative destinations, final destination is again chosen on the basis of information gathered from internet and from family and friends. The study has found leisure to be the main motivation of making a trip followed by knowledge and culture (an urge to know about new places), socialization and escape from stress of every day life, and sports and adventure. (Crompton, 425-28; Crompton and Ankomah, 475; ) Description of the event Recently I went on a trip to Seattle, the biggest city in Washington. It is an experience of lifetime. The panning of this trip actually took two long months. This trip is very special to me as this trip had actually got to happen after meeting so many problems during the choice of the travel destination. Three months ago ten of my friends had decided to go for a long vacation. The month of April was chosen as this month seemed to be convenient for managing ten free days from each of us work and family commitments. After deciding on the time of the trip, the most important question came, i.e. where to go? We had initially chosen four alternative places as our travel destination. These places were Las Vegas, Seattle, Hollywood, and Florida. All these four places are well known travel destinations in U.S.A. Our families and other friends also made strong recommendation for these four places. After selection of the four initial alternative travel destinations, it took almost two months for making the final decision. Our decision making process got very complicated as every time all of us failed to reach a unanimous decision regarding the ultimate travel spot for our long waited vacation. I along with three other friends of mine in our group of ten insisted on choosing Seattle as the travel destination, while four others wanted to go Florida and the rest of three had expressed their wish to go either Las Vegas or Hollywood. Although, among these four alternatives, Las Vegas had got cancelled first as a ten day long tour trip in Las Vegus had been found to be very expensive. Las Vegas is the most expensive tourist destination in U.S.A. and given our limited money, we could not afford a trip to Las Vegas. Once, Las Vegas Got cancelled out from our alternative choices of travel destinations, huge problem arose regarding the choice of final destination among the remaining three. Among these three spots Seattle is considered to be one the most culturally reached city in U.S.A. Music and culture is in the heart of this city. Not only that, it is also a perfect destination of travel for a nature lover as one can have spectacular views of snowcapped mountains in one hand, and salty sea on the other hand. As I am a true lover of music along with a complete nature lover, Seattle was the place that attracted me the most. Just like me, three of my friends are also very much passionate about music and they were very interested to visit the birth place of grunge and to test the flavor of music and culture in the most culturally reached city of U.S. But our choice did not get matched with the choices of my other friends in our group. Four my friend wanted to spend this vacation by relaxing on the attractive beaches of Florida. They were very keen about making a trip to Florida and continuously pressurizing all of us for agreeing on making a trip to Florida. They were least interested about the scenic beauty of Seattle, and learning the cultural history of the city by visiting the place itself. Rests of the three friends of mine are dry hard fan of Hollywood movies. They desperately wanted to go to Hollywood to visit the shooting locations of their favorite films, they also dreamt of meting some of their stars too, but they were not as rigid regarding their decision as the rests of us were. Once the remaining six of us expressed our unwillingness for making trip to Hollywood, two of them started to insist all of us to go to Florida while one wanted to go to Seattle. Most of us were so rigid about our own choices that ultimately four of us including me decided to go to Seattle, while the remaining six decided for Florida. So the group of our ten friends actually got spitted when the question of choosing a tourist destination came. Discussion and analysis As found in the existing literature, several components are involved in making a final decision regarding the leisure product “tourism”. In this section some major components will be considered separately to find out to what extent own findings supports or contrasts the opinions expressed in the existing literature on tourism decision making. Motivation: Motivation is a major component in planning a trip to a certain place. Actually it is the nature of motivation of a particular person that plays the most crucial role in deciding tourists’ destination. The major motivating factor of planning a trip is to spend leisure time in some new places. But while for some people the prime motive for a trip is to escape the stress of daily life or socialize with various unknown people, self evaluation, etc., for some others a prime motivating factor is enrich their knowledge by learning social and cultural history of new places apart from just taking part in various sort of recreations during the time of traveling. While some people want to explore natural beauty of places various new places, some others want to go to that places which are full off man made excellent sculptures. (Beard, G. and Mounir, 221-222) Similar kind of reasoning can well be applied in case of explaining our decision regarding the selection of travel spot. While the main travel motivation of mine along with three of friends was to explore the cultural history of Seattle as it is the most musically and culturally enriched city of U.S.A. and we are true music lover, my other friends were not so much motivated by this factor and it is the prime reason for them to disagree in the selection of Seattle. Six of my other friends were not so much interested in spending their leisure hours in learning of something. They just wanted to relax and completely escape from their stress of their daily life. Apart from sunbathing lying on the beautiful beaches of Florida, what could be more attractive to them? Hence, beaches of Florida attracted them more than the cultural city of Seattle. Socialization factor also plays an important role in our decision making process. Some of my friends have a passion for making new friends from different countries and to them Florida’s beaches seemed to be ideal places for spending their leisure time with lot of unknown foreigners as Florida’s beaches are very famous travel destinations for people across the world. Hence, as far as motivation factor is concerned, it becomes quite evident that as found in existing literature, both theoretical and practical, all of my friends including me had chosen travel destinations according to the respective prime motive of travel. Perception or images: As found in the literature, perceptions or images about certain places also play a vital role in shaping the tourists’ decision regarding travel spots. (Murphy, Pritchard, and Smith Seattle, 43) is mostly perceived as the city of culture and music with scenic natural beauty that combines snowcapped mountains with seas. On the other hand Florida is well known for its beautiful beaches. Florida is basically a city of joy and recreation. This images of Seattle and Florida which have been created through gathering information from internet and friend’s and family’s experiences help to a large extent in selecting Seattle as the ultimate travel destination among several alternative by me along with three others, and Florida by six others. Learning: As predicted by the models, learning about several aspects of certain places also influences tourists’ decision making process. Since, four people including have major interest in making a trip to Seattle, most of our learning were on different aspects of the city of Seattle. We wanted to know it in a better way before making the actual trip. Since we were least concerned about other places we did not devote much time in learning about the cultural history of Florida which would also have been found to be as interesting as of Seattle. (Beatty and Smith, 83; Crompton, 413-415) Family and cultural influences: Family and cultural influences also play important role in Consumer’s decision making. My family members are passionate about music and some of them had already visited the cultural city of Seattle and were overwhelmed by their experiences. The constantly encouraged me to have a trip to Seattle. So, when I got the opportunity, in the back of my mind I got very much exited to go to Seattle instead of anywhere else. The cultural aspects were also in right place while making the ultimate travel destination. As predicted by the models, the culture one belongs to always play a major role in shaping his or her consumption decisions in such a way that those decisions fit the culture. So my own experiences seem to support what have been predicted by the models. But, one interesting thing that has come out from my own experiences is that motivation is the most important component in making a decision regarding traveling to a place. In this context, one thing should be mentioned that one of family members of one of my friends who went to Florida was as passionate about music and culture as my own family members. They even insisted my friend to go with us to Seattle. But as his prime motive was to relax on the beautiful beaches by keeping himself away from any sort of learning, he chose to go to Florida. So in this case, the real life finding contradicts to what have been predicted in the model. Another disadvantages of the models developed to explain tourism behavior is that they only talk about the factor that influences a consumer’s decision making process. They do not elaborately discuss the extent by which each factor affect the decision making process. In reality, in most of the cases some factors seem to act relatively strongly compared to the others. So, it might happen that while one particular factor is in favor of a particular destination of travel, some other factor is in favor of other places. So, ultimate decisions, in these cases, become very difficult to draw. These models fail to describe what a consumer does when such kind of situation may arise, or what factors use to gain much importance over the others. Conclusion On the basis of the observations discussed in this paper, it has become clear that consumer purchasing behavior in case of tourism is a complex procedure. It involves lot of factors ranging from psychological elements of the consumers to socio-cultural aspects. In making a travel plan, the ultimate decision about choosing the destination of travel is an outcome of a series of events. In most of the theories of consumer decision making, motivation, perception, socio-cultural and family influences, knowledge etc. have been found to be the major factors influencing a consumer’s purchasing decision. On the basis of own experiences, however, motivating factors, and images are found to be the most influential factor in shaping up a decision in case of choosing a travel destination among several alternatives. On the basis of what have been observed throughout the paper, it can be said that for marketing a particular tourists spot, strategies should be made in such a way that a clear image incorporating all the aspects of that place is built so that people with different motives find the place attractive in the same way. For example, to attract more and more tourists who are nature lover as well as want to make themselves completely stress free, travel agencies needs to portray an image which will not present it only as the city of culture or Microsoft, but also a place having beautiful mountains and sea beaches. Similarly in case Florida also without stressing all the focus on its beaches, its cultural aspects also needs to be highlighted to attract more tourists. Referencing: 1. Beard, Jacob G. and Mounir G. Measuring Leisure Motivation, Journal of Leisure Research, v.15 n.3, 219-28. 1983. 2. Beatty, Sharon.E. Scott M. Smith External Search Effort: an investigation across several product categories, Journal of Consumer Research. 1987. pp 83-97 3. Crompton, John, Structure of vacation destination choice sets, Annals of Tourism Research 19, 420-434. 1992. 4. Crompton, John and Paul K. Ankomah. Choice set propositions in destination decisions, Annals of Tourism Research 20, 461-476. 1993. 5. 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